Monday, August 5, 2013

Griffith Park Love-Ins / Satan's Slaves / Suzan LaBerge / Arthur Lee's Castle

Erik writes:

I was looking through some pics of Griffith Park Love-Ins for something I'm writing and came across this guy in a SS vest. Thought you might enjoy it. There are quite a few pics from that day.
http://www.pbase.com/saintj/image/32263193


Also, I lived in Los Feliz just a couple blocks from Waverly for the last 6 years or so in the guest house of a woman who lived there since '63. Her friend N lived at 3093 St. George which is the yellow lot on the map below.


The night of the murders they had a "sing" at the St. George house until 1AM or so, a dozen or so people singing folk songs. Then they left, nothing was unusual. In the morning N told me she let the dogs out to sniff around in the street like she always did. They went up the driveway across the street and came back with their tails down. She said she told this to the police when they came later. No biggee but pretty creepy to hear her tell this. She moved away last year. Here's her house listing. http://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angeles/3093-St-George-St-90027/home/7063679

Also, she told me that Suzan LaBerge worked at the Tam 'o Shanter at this time and she went right back to work which she thought was strange. She said she thought she had a drinking problem (who could blame her).
We used to go eat there on holidays when I was little.
http://www.lawrysonline.com/tam-oshanter/general-info

Of course Arthur Lee's "Castle" was a few blocks away as well, though he was long gone by then.
http://love.torbenskott.dk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=583
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jpoCnlk-8

Best,
Erik





11 comments:

AustinAnn74 said...

I have always wondered why Rosemary LaBianca's daughter went to bat for Tex, and Tex only. How come she never went to visit Leslie or Pat? I saw an interview her and Tex did for some religious show back in the 80's, and Tex actually started crying when he described his first encounter with Suzan. Was it the first?

Suze said...

Dogs have such hightened senses that it's amazing. They obviously smelled death and were frightened.

Suzan went right back to work? Wow, I bet she was numb.

Farflung said...

A small point here; the ‘Tam O’Shanter Inn’ was called ‘The Great Scot’ at the time of the La Bianca murders.

The Tam O’Shanter was a favorite dining place of Walt Disney who also happened to own a home the La Bianca’s would occupy before moving to Waverly.

The Tam O’Shanter was owned by partners Walter Van de Camp (of Van de Kamp bakery LA) and Lawrence Frank who went on to establish Lawry’s small chain of restaurants. Men will know the Lawry’s name from the bottle of seasoning salts we are required to own as some cosmic requirement of gender. Go ahead ladies and look. It may not be in the kitchen, but near the grill, behind some oil cans in the garage, or in a tool box, but all men have at least one.

Van de Kamp’s grandson would go on to be a long serving Attorney General of California under Governor Deukmejian. During their collective tenure, a former death row convict who was granted clemency in the 1972 Supreme Court decision was granted parole. This was a pre-Manson bogeyman named Archie Fain, who murdered a 17 year old kid with a shotgun blast, so he could have access to a pair of teenaged female passengers, for the purposes of assault, kidnapping, and rape. This parole (one out of thousands) was denied by the Governor, then reversed by the Parole Board, under the banner of NOT responding to public outcry, which led to the ultimate release of Archie Fain.

Much to the California Parole Board's chagrin, ‘public outcry’ is commonly called an ‘election cycle’ in the United States of America. Public outcry morphed into abject rage, which manifested in the creation of Proposition 89, which granted the office of the Governor, ‘parole denial’ powers over those convicted of murder. Governors have always had the powers of clemency. As an end result of defying the will of the people by forcing parole on a prisoner, who was sentenced to the death penalty, by a jury of his peers, hundreds and hundreds of murderers have been kept in prison well beyond their initial expected sentences. This includes the collective clan known as 'The Family'.

So there you have it in a long, drooling, series of disjointed ramblings where the La Biancas have a daughter which works for the same ‘family’, which will become the future protagonists, of a law which will deny parole, to a group who dodged the gas chamber in ‘72. (insert: Twilight Zone bumper)

As a final ironic footnote of injustice to the justice system; Archie Fain WAS required to register as a sex offender due to the passage of Megan’s Law. However, the crimes associated with the file on Archie Fain did NOT include murder (he killed a 17 year old boy), because Megan’s Law excludes crimes which are not associated with sex. Somehow I find the fact that a person was willing to murder someone in order to commit a ‘lesser’ crime as extremely relevant and significant. Oh well.

Matt said...

Thank you for that, Farf. I just looked up Fain. A real prince charming he was. He eventually did receive parole and ended up in Santa Rosa, where he later he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a teacher. I'll bet Deb is familiar with his name.

In the next several years after his release, Fain was arrested for peeping and loitering in San Jose and for drunken driving in Santa Cruz, getting 75 days in jail for each offense. He beat a charge of failing to register as a sex offender in Arizona and followed that a month later with a DUI after a high-speed crash in Fremont. And in 1990, he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a Hayward schoolteacher. The woman originally was from Oakdale, where he had murdered Mark Ulrich 23 years earlier. Stahl chalked up the acquittal to a "sharp lawyer."

Farflung said...

Here’s a little more background on Archie Fain and the inexplicable duplicity issued by a supreme court judge:

Fain Ruling

In particular the following quote from Judge Breiner:

“Unlike the Roman circus, where the roar of the crowd would determine the life or death of the gladiator, our community cannot survive without rules. Those rules must apply fairly to all, without delegating to the crowd the power to apply, or refuse to apply, those rules based on popular sentiment.”

Really Judge Breiner? Really??

‘We the people’, or as Judge Breiner has unilaterally renamed ‘the Roman Circus’, most certainly possess ALL the power of a representative government, ‘delegated’ to us, via elections to staff branches of that government, with checks and balances built in.

I will always rely upon, and continue to expect a rational response, from a broad cross section of the citizenry of this country, before I would ever consider the enabling of one person or branch of government to occupy such a station.

It really is hard to believe Judge Breiner could display that much ‘Star Chamber’ hubris, combined with utter analysis paralysis, regarding the downstream impact of such a statement, let alone action.

Stepping off soapbox cautiously, walking to the bar… briskly.

Patty is Dead said...

Patty could listen to Farf all day long. :)

Max Frost said...

Farf is a star!

Ajerseydevil said...

Sorry for going off topic but my
Pre release order of the new MANSON book The life and Times of Charles MANSON is being shipped this week
I've been waiting a yr for this release

DebS said...

That makes two of us William. I ordered mine last December. I think tomorrow is the day they are supposed to be shipped. There sure has been a lot of online press for the book, I hope it's as good as the reviews claim.

Ajerseydevil said...

Thanks Debs I know they tried to make the release date close to the anniversary of the crimes
The book is over 500 pages always prefer books with a little meat on the bones

fiona1933 said...

People should listen to animals. Remember the Josef Fritzl case in Austria? The man who kept his daughter Elisabeth imprisoned in a specially constructed apartment underneath the house for 24 years, siring 7 children on her? A family upstairs and a family trapped in a few, almost airless, rooms below. For 24 years.

Well, the house belonged to Fritzl but was divided into apartments and rented out, and one guy, unwittingly, lived directly above Elisabeth's prison. He said his dog would sometimes whine and scratch frantically at the floor, in one spot. Where beneath, Elizabeth was screaming, unheard.

Could the dog hear her, or feel the vibrations, like an earthquake? Things that have no language are aware in other ways (as Charlie could tell us). How do my cats know when a particular kid is coming, even if it's a different time? She suddenly lifts her head and even though I can't hear the lift, I know Patrick will be there in a moment. How does the cat always be there when I open the door to come home? She's been sleeping on the bed, it's warm, but somehow she knew it was me and I come home a different time every day.